I have caught hold of the ‘Catcher in the rye‘ now again after a previous unsuccessful attempt to complete reading it. I am going for it again after i found words of praise on the book by one of my friends who has never as much bothered to pick any book to check out just even the title (which is his claim by the way). The ‘Catcher..’ just seems to be a typical guy’s story written in a typical guy like narrative, never bothering to get into details and using profanity instead of period to complete every sentence. Nevertheless i find it very amusing, but more on the catcher later. Let me finish the book.

There was this other book which i never finished. Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat Love Pray‘ . If ‘catcher in the rye’ was a typical guy’s narrative, ‘Eat Love Pray’, is a typical woman’s narrative,taking time to describe every details to bore to the core. It’s more like reading the depressed woman’s personal diary. Seventy five pages down,having read all her rendezvouses in Italy, i found it increasingly difficult to continue .

Books are always unfinished business , they are just agglomeration of ‘lean-tos’ and ‘annexes’, it would further be a sin to not finish the already unfinished, so i intend to get back to Elizabeth Gilbert too, just to take up the challenge this book has posed. Let’s see.

I prefer fiction , for all i need to do is just read it. I read less of non fiction, for i have imposed upon myself for reasons unknown, to constitute opinions upon or attempt to summarise within myself the core essence of the writings, for which i need to work my mind too. I once had to sit up on my table chair and read the ‘Brief history of time’ , paying complete attention, as i had read ‘Computer Architecture’ by John Hayes for my semester exams. I don’t want to do that often.

And that means that i don’t pick classics either. Only connoisseurs of literature could ever appreciate classics properly or just read one patiently. I am not one, i don’t intend to become one. I immensely liked the ‘Count of Monte Cristo‘ and ‘The Scarlet pimpernal‘ though, they came in far simpler packages , abridged in small white text books during my school days for the ‘non detail’.

Now presenting the list that has appealed to me the most,

Fiction:

1. The Shepherd – Frederick Forsyth

2. No comebacks – Frederick Forsyth

3. The Rainmaker – John Grisham

4. The Bourne identity – Robert Ludlum

5. As the Crow flies – Jeffrey Archer

6. Not a penny more not a penny less – Jeffrey Archer

7. The sphere – Michael Crichton

8. Acceptable risk – Robin Cook

9. Four past midnight – Stephen king

10.Green Mile – Stephen King

11.The Shawshank redemption – Stephen king

I think the entire credit for runaway successes of the motion pictures of ‘Shawshank redemption’ and ‘the Green mile’ entirely goes to the King, for the movies had pretty much faithfully followed the books to even most of the dialogues. They are the most beautiful books i have ever read till date. When the ‘Green mile’ ends with Paul Edgecombe reflecting ‘Oh the Green mile is so long’, figuratively suggesting the state of the mind of the lonely old man who just awaits an eluding death (wishing actually), you are not sure whether you just need to put it out or begin reading it from the beginning all over again.

I like Frederick Forsyth for the exhaustive researches he does for his books and put it to use for creating make believe ingenious plots.’The Shepherd’ is an exception though, there is no plot , but nevertheless a great read. John Grisham and Robin Cook write novels on their own field of work. As slow it may be, the narratives of John Grisham are far appealing and connect with you instantly, the Rain maker is a classic case (pun unintended).

As ‘filmy’ it could be , Archer’s plots are a great delight to read. But i have to admit i found his ‘Prison diaries’ far more interesting than his novels. I like almost all the books of Michael Crichton. His focus is more on the plot , some in Arthur Hailey style, encapsulating all the parameters of a ‘system’ in hand with a plot of a time bomb running in the background.

Non fiction:

1. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

2.The power of now – Eckhart Tolle

3.E = mc2 – David Bodanis

4.You can do it – Paul Hanna

The power of Now , which claims to be the ‘guide to spiritual enlightenment’, is a more descriptive work of the human conscious mind and it’s perceptions i believe. I specifically like the way Eckhart Tolle defines silence as an absence of sound and space as a ‘nothing’ but absence of matter. If you were to find a definition of space as ‘nothing’ and still don’t understand by what it means, you should probably let Eckhart Tolle do the description in this book.

‘E = Mc2’ is a on the ‘biography’ on this famous equation, rather than on its discoverer. Nevertheless there are some fables on the discoverer too . A fascinating read, it has some great insights to some complex scientific concepts as well that has gone behind the formulation of the energy mass equivalence.

I generally keep away from self help books. A bad self help book does no good. ‘You can do it’ is an exception, Paul Hanna doesn’t attempt to indoctrinate anything, it ‘s more of evaluating ourselves and to identify our own responsibilities for things that had potentially gone wrong.

Well, that’s just about it, this is a list i have been having for quite sometime , without a change.I am waiting for a book that would somehow make to this list. Recommendations welcome..

If you think there is a ‘e’ missing between F and b in the title , you’re right, the left hand finger is responsible for inputting that ‘e’ , and I have an incised left palm that I am trying to work with, despite its protests.

Well after a supposedly ambitious start of this space for rant, it seems Snoopy had cursed me bad for putting it in my profile picture and calling it a ‘bumm’ that it had caused somehow to slash my left palm myself unintended in a little hasty act on the verge of amusing my tongue , which has a never-ending predilection of those ‘burnt umber’ little delicacies.I will defer divulging the exact act which caused the incision, lest Snoopy should recommend Charles Schulz to include me along with Charlie Brown and gang as one of the lead caricatures for ‘peanuts’.

There was an immediate gush of a mini fountain of blood. The delicacy had slipped out in this moment of mayhem freaking out my ‘cube’ mate to such an extent that he thought i actually had chopped of one of my fingers. The pudding was spared and the palm was spoiled.

We immediately rushed over to medical centre of our office complex, only to discover there were no doctors or staff who knew first aid in the facility. Nothing, except for a pretty attendant woman looking so helpless that i actually pitied her . It is amazing how human mind could fathom a thing like this in the same time you are thinking whether the knife that had just slashed your hand had maybe grazed a nerve also.

We then rushed outside to get an auto rickshaw to get to the nearest hospital, the driver , who by the way, really seemed to be a pro with charting out the longest possible route one could ever take for the shortest destination in the slowest speed possible. I spilled some blood in his vehicle as a sign of gratitude.

An attendant outside the hospital welcomed and led us to the emergency room as if we had come to attend Al Gore’s TED talk.The medical staff cleaned my blood soaked hands to offer me a clearer look of the cut , running across the midsection of the palm, baring some flesh, beaming a smiley’s smile.

The on duty medical ‘intensivist’ then came to examine the mess in my hand and declared that the cut was after all superficial . All of a sudden the emergency room door flung open and a team of medical staff came inside bringing a man on the stretcher with a body full of bloodshed. It seems this fellow had attempted a far enterprising adventure of pursuing a close overtake of a bus and a delayed sudden brake .He was soon forcefully dislodged from his vehicle by a ‘on the go’ unforeseen brutal force ,body coasting effortlessly to the underneath of the underbelly of the bus.Thankfully the bus it seemed had stopped immediately and a James Bond becoming mincemeat transmogrification was averted for the day.

I was asked to wait, for the fellow did deserve immediate medical attention. Atleast my bleeding had stopped.

An artwork of a 1×6 stitch had to be made to shut the smiling smiley’s mouth. I returned home early in the evening from office as the effects of the local anesthesia began to wean out and a short and sweet of a painful evening ensued.

Well, in all justification of ‘haste makes waste’, the issue could have been sorted out with just one in hundredth of whatever i had to expend on this one act show, one has to be always careful and exercise extra caution in potentially perilous situations. Afterall not all failed adventures are intended. Isn’t it?

A space for some free jabbering atlast.. i used to blog years back and and was a celebrated writer then.. inspired by my thoughts and creativity in my writing , the Wachowski brothers used my ideas to make a film called Matrix, not that it bothered me , but they never gave me the credit for my original ideas. I got so dejected that i deferred writing for so long, now i have quite consolidated things to set off again . Let me now see if i can inspire anything else or try changing the world …

Bumm

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